Yes, my girlfriend is a wonderful latina of Mexican hertage (though not a native Spanish speaker, she does speak some Spanish) and one of my very best friends is of Mexican heritage, a wise young-old man who speaks Spanish fluently. I can toss off a few Spanish words and appellations correctly. . .but I can't speak Spanish. Maybe one day I'll learn. My girlfriend talks about learning more Spanish and my learning with her. If only she wouldn't spend 50 to 60 hours a week at work! It's hard to believe she retired once four years ago. . .but was asked to return to her job and stayed away only 30 days!

I love the different sounds of Spanish (depending on the speaker's place of origin). I studied French for years in Africa and when I returned to America, but haven't had a lot of speaking practice in decades, which is a shame, so much of the language has disappeared from my brain. It helps a bit with Spanish, but doesn't help in some instances (for example in French I've always heard "mon ami", not just "ami.") Anyway, I love cultural diversity. Learning other languages and customs and manners is very appealing to me.

Juan, whose English seems better than most I run into for whom it is nominally their first language, is IMHO quite correct. While imaging is very apparent even while I move around the room, there are decided differences in the vertical plane as one moves.

Although I think the ERRs do well loud, both my younger daughters and I noticed that in 4.0 mode, they could easily get overpowering. That is a lot of sound. Some of that I suspect is the harshness of the Denon amp they are revealing. But all of us agreed for example, that the sound produced on the Dire Straits Brothers in Arms DVD-A was more desirable in 5.1 [but hearing 4.0] than 2.0. The immersion can be quite seductive. The title cut is simply amazing.

Today, i plan to listen to the DVD-A of Jackson Browne's Running on Empty. I love this disc, and the performances on it have some sentimental attachments. But it is also well recorded, and I plan to test Juan's view that live recordings don't sound as good with the radial approach. He may be right, though the classical chorale works I have listened to so far—Verdi's Requiem, Mozart's Requiem, and Beethoven's 9th—have been quite extraordinary.

With any luck, I may get the Torii and the Ultra into the front end of the system as well.

Greg, it may be the Denon but your ERRs are going to need about 300 hours total to begin to sound as treble-grain-free as they can be.

Still, yeah, at very high volumes I imagine in a quartet the ERRs could be very over-powering. Still, working with resistors you could get them pretty much just right.

I haven't found there to be a big difference between live and recorded material, though much of the live material I listen to is very simply recorded, a lot of unofficial recordings with just one or two microphones and little "production". . . that may be a factor.

I think you make a good point regarding the classification of live recordings. The Cowboy Junkies' Trinity disc, for example, and the Tone Pearls Piano Music in a Church are elegantly simple recording processes.

But the discussion about the role of diffuse speaker sound in reproducing recordings that have already captured sound reverberation reminds me a bit of those tiresome Bose/anti-Bose debates. I have no dog in that hunt, but one recurrent theme was that very issue: why attempt to exaggerate soundstage through speaker reflections, when the soundstage was already in the material? Of course, some people like the Bose effect, and I am certainly not going to begrudge them (never understood the desire to diminish what another person likes, so long as it's not illegal or dangerous to children).

The radial approach is quite different from the reflective approach, of course. They are not even in the same category—though they share the similarity of what I might call "anti-beaminess"—but the notion that the radial approach might be less or "differently" effective on certain live recordings is an interesting one.

I just want to warn you. Spanish is quite difficult, more than english. We have a lot of conjugation of the verbs. English is extremely easy on this. The past of a regular verb is just by adding "ed". The articles, the adjectives, the verbs, ... they include gender female or male, if it is singular or plural. We can omit speaking an article "She, he or the" in a sentence because the rest contain all the info of the gender and number and who we are talking about.

A very simple example of this magnitude is the article "the": we have "la/el/lo/los/las". It contains the gender and number of the following name. Contrary to english, things have gender too, not only persons. Like french or german. So if you learnt french while ago as I did (I did it at school for a few years) you know what I am talking about.

Now I am gonna see what I can do with german. I hope to learn a lot.

"I love the different sounds of Spanish (depending on the speaker's place of origin)"

hehe, the spanish of Spain is quite different sounding from the spanish of America. They have variants, written mistakes and weird words that almost destroy the original language we shared to them, depending on the place, of course. It sounds quite weird to us as well. We speak the real orthodox spanish (the original), which the margin of difference is quite higher than the difference between british english (the origin) and american english. Yes, british has a different accent and certain different words but to me it's quite similar overall compared to american. American english sounds more natural than british in my opinion. I hate trying to follow the very hardest british accents of a speech when the plosive sounds are exaggerated, very short vowels and very quick decays. On the contrary, the hardest american accent with very nasal sound is not as difficult to the ears.

Of course I know that american english has multiple of different accents, like in the UK, like in Spain and like in Latin America. For instance, scottish has a bit similar accent to the spanish of Spain.

Apart from that, It's sad that people generalize so much with cultures and promote racism. For the color of the skin, eyes, facial features,...

I've a little knowledge that even there's the ignorance that "spanish" or hispanic means automatically "a bad amerindian guy with dark skin" or so. Because that is far from the truth. OK, generally Central America is well know to have conservative original amerindian genetics (darker skin and indian facial characteristics). There's way less genetic mix of Spain. Then, there is south (Argentina), white skinned, very occidental facial characteristics, very accentuated colonization mainly by Italy and Spain. Therefore, there's also blue/green eyed, blond/brown haired genetics. This is just an example in general.

My cousin and I, for example, are night and day. He is black haired, brown skinned, almost black eyed. I am blue/green eyed, dark/brown haired with a hint of blond, white skinned. When I was a very young child a little blond haired. It is simply that my father is completely blond and my mother changes in the hair to dark only. Past origin similitudes are identical (to my knowledge).In general, we are like italians, there's blond genetics of central europeans, there's muslims genetics too, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway. The point is that it's so wrong to generalize and judge people by their skin. What matters is the person itself. I know a cuban guy (african genetics) that is much more educated and culturalized (geography, languages, history, ...) than many more people I'd like to count.

Apart from that, I don't know why the hell you name it soccer instead of football. You know, american football is played mainly by using the hands to take the ball, contrary to "soccer", played by the feet literally in every sense of the word, that's football, man, not soccer. Rugby makes more sense than football, hehe.

Apart from that super offtopic:

My experience with live recordings have been that. It depends on the own room too. The ideal situation is just hearing the spacial info where the recording was recorded. Add your room acoustics and you just destroy it. Recordings are recorded differently so some live ones sounds just great. Others, like this famous one, Jazz at the Pawnshop, I find it weird and lacks coherency, for example:

As an example, the Mike Oldfield's Music of Spheres both Live and studio sounds great:

Thanks for all that information. Languages are fascinating. As I said I learned French first, in Africa, and then at the same time I learned a basic knowledge of Amharic, the official language in Ethiopia. When we moved to Swaziland I learned a bit of SiSwati, the language there, and also was force-fed Latin, as I was in an English-style boarding-school and everyone there had had Latin for several years and the school headmaster was my Latin teacher. I had no choice but to cover three years of Latin in one! I did well with it, but again much of it is gone as I did not use it afterwards at all. But it has helped me with other language problems.

I have heard different accents in Spanish and agree that there are some extreme differences. And I know about the cultural and genetic differences too. I've noticed among persons of Mexican descent here in Texas that sometimes there is discrimination among them of the darkest, most "Indian" of them, by the fairest of them, which is so sad, and so sad especially because there are those "Anglos" (thankfully few) who hate them all, whether fair and "Spanish" or darker. I grew up in the fifties and up to mid-sixties in inner city Philadelphia and saw racism between whites and blacks and hispanics and was appalled, because I was fortunate to be raised by very loving and kind people who felt we were all the same, and taught me that, and showed me that they believed that. Racism just makes me ill, as it is so against my nature.

Juan, your English is excellent! Thanks for sharing all this with me. If I can get around to learning Spanish it will be fun, in large part because i will be learning that with my beloved Anadina, my girlfriend, as well.

And one day perhaps I'll be able to add South America to the list of continents I've visited. So far I've lived in Africa (for nearly six years) and visited Europe. I'd love to go to Brazil because I have enjoyed and studied music from there for years, and met some interesting people from there,* and I'd love to go to Argentina because I have met some WONDERFUL people from there, and I'd love to go to Paraguay because my youngest uncle lived there a few years and told me the most marvelous stories, and to Chile, because my late wife spent months there (up to and including the revolutionary period in '73!) as a sort of "exchange" student and it was one of the most important periods of her life; she is the only girl child of her parents, and in Chile she stayed with a family with five daughters and she never forgot how it was to have sisters!

I'm not typing very well this morning so bare with me.

In regards to the live recordings: I don't have any room treatment so that may be a reason why I don't feel that live recordings are particularly compromised. I've never heard the two recordings you have pictured there, so I can't comment on their sound. But I do find that there's plenty of room information on the live recordings that I listen to that seem to come through. They sound pretty natural to me. I love the ERRs. They've really reached into my mind and painted their sonic signature there. Almost any other speaker sounds boxed in and constrained in comparison after years wtih the Radial design.

* In regards to the Brazilians I've met, it's very funny one of them is the wife of a friend of mine. When he began dating her, he told me all about this wonderful exotic woman he was crazy about and I had this idea of this beautiful Brazilian woman that was all wrong! When I met her I discovered she was from a German town in Brazil and she was so fair and blonde-haired and blue-eyed and looked like the girl on the St. Pauli Girl beer bottles. I learned a lot about a different aspect of Brazil talking to her about her family and home town.

I read all this with great interest! Congrats to Pale Rider and your ERR's, please update us when you can with some more pics of them if possible!

I own newer Ohm Walsh CLS driver OW3's with John's newest 3000 series drivers in them. I do love the omni/radial approach very much, so these threads on the ERR's are very good reads.

I find the look of these, especially the cabinetry to be extremely nice, fit and finish look to be of the highest quality. I would love to get a listen to these at some point.

A question that I have is along the lines of amplification. I have older Audio Research gear, none of it tubed at the moment, all solid-state. I am curious if any of you have played the ERR's on solid-state gear and what the general results have been. My gear comprises of CD2 CD player, LS3 preamp, D130 power amplifier, wiring by DH Labs or Audioquest.

My current listening room is actually my living room, which is fairly open and I have good choices as to speaker placement. Room is approx. 15' X 16.5', but is also open to an adjoining kitchen/dining area of 14' X 10'.

I listen to all types of music, jazz, pop, blues, a little classical, prog. rock. Listening levels vary, but not a head-banger!

I do enjoy my Ohm's very much, and realize they aren't the same as the "real-deal" Walsh driver on an A or F, but still they do a lot of things right. Would be interested in anyone's take or comparison of the ERR versus the Ohm's if there are any.

Thanks for your time, I have enjoyed the forum here. Enjoy the music, Tim

Welcome aboard! Always nice to see another radial fan. I am afraid I won't be a good comparison point, because it has been a long time since I had my Ohms. But I do believe Steve and Bob are on to something with the ERR driver structure. Sound is very open and transparent. As you may have read here, I first listened to the ERRs through my Denon receiver, and was struck by how good they sounded. Yes, the Denon sounded flat, etched, but detail was well-presented, and soundstage was pretty good in 2 dimensions. In one sense, the ERRs are quite "forgiving," but as you put better stuff on them, they will show it. I had a brief listen on a 2-channel output from my Oppo into the first Torii directly, and it was quite extraordinary. My second Torii arrived yesterday, and my Zracks are on the way [I literally have no place to put this stuff safely]. Once I get the racks, and everything else set up, I will report back. The plasma comes off the cabinet this weekend, and on to the wall. That will mean I have credenza style cabinet to at least place the amps until the racks come in. Until then, I won't bother with center channel.

P.S. Fit & finish are superb. They are lovely. Bob's approach to shipping can only be described as "best practice."

Thanks for those that have replied, all interesting. From a construction point of view on the ERR's, is the bottom of the cabinet ported in between the plinth? What is in the cabinet-stuffing or is it open, just curious. These just look like another great design, and I am really going to have to take a listen to a pair at some point.

I do love my Ohm's too, the styling is also a thing that I like and the ERR cabinets look very good too. Just a very timeless styling in my opinion, beats the typical boxes.

Has anyone else used these with solid state gear? I sure wouldn't be opposed to going tube at some point, but the ERR's would more than likely come first if I did like them. I have enjoyed my ARC gear for a long time and really am in no hurry to change that part of the system. Will continue to read and watch this forum.

I wanted to add to the great information that Pale Rider gave about the ERRs, and that I agree with, with just a bit of info about solid state amplification. I haven't yet tried this with the ERRs, but with my RL2s (an ERR predecessor) I sometimes ran a Proton 50 watt "Power Envelope" amp just to keep that amp "supple" over time. This isn't a great amp like an AR but not a bad one, pretty even tonal balance. They really light up the RL2s, quite an energetic and open sound. I bet the ERRs would work just fine.

Lon, your Proton brought back some very fond Proton and NAD memories. Well made, high value equipment. Considering the price range, they did very nice work with solid state. I was especially fond of my NAD FM tuner.

My 84ZS shipped today. I am closing in on bringing it all together. I have been breaking the Ultra in with the same tubes Steve specifies, but with NOS ones that I bought specifically for it. In the "back row," that means NOS Sylvania 0A3 tubes, that glow a very nice soft orange. Just for fun, I lined up an 0A3, 0B3, 0C3, and 0D3. Pretty slick. My daughters voted in favor of the fairly bright purple 0C3. Perhaps I will try out a full quad. I have some nice Raytheon JAN 0C3s.

PR, with the plasma going on the wall, what direction will the tweeters on the dual center speakers face: Toward the wall or out into the room? If the plasma is up high enough, facing the tweeters toward the wall should work well enough. It will be interesting to see how this works out.